Google Web Toolkit Blog

Posted by
Chris Ramsdale - Monday, April 04, 2011
at
10:59:00 AM

We’re not going to be shy about this, the GWT team loves tools and APIs that make developers' lives better. That’s why we’re happy to have reached an important milestone within the GWT 2.3 release, and are making the GWT 2.3 Beta available for public preview today. This release focuses on bringing Google Services and APIs directly into the Eclipse IDE, making it easier than ever to build fantastic apps using the GWT SDK and Google Plugin for Eclipse (GPE).

Easy Discovery and Access to Google APIs
The number of new APIs hosted by Google has been on the rise lately, and we think this is great for developers looking to add cool features to their apps, such as Google Maps overlays, Buzz streams, and Google Docs integration. To help developers build out these features, we’ve added the ability to browse and add Google APIs directly from Eclipse. Simply highlight a project and the select the “Google - Add Google APIs” menu item to get started.

Import Projects from Project Hosting
What developer tool would be cloud-enabled if it didn’t allow you to store your source code in the cloud? GPE 2.3 provides a simple UI that makes importing projects, from Project Hosting, into Eclipse a piece of cake. We’ve been eating our own dogfood for years, with Project Hosting being the home for GWT source, issue, tracking, wikis, and downloads, so we’re particularly excited to see this functionality within GPE.

One Login, Many Services
As we’ve increased the breadth of services that GPE is communicating with, we wanted to make sure that the user experience remained streamlined. To do so, we’ve included an option to specify your Google Account information only once (using the same authentication mechanisms as Gmail and Google Docs), and deploy to App Engine and import projects from Project Hosting as many times as necessary.

Local Storage APIs
One of the key differentiators between legacy desktop apps and modern web apps is their ability to access data quickly and continue to be usable offline. With the GWT 2.3 SDK we’ve included support for accessing Web Storage, leveling the playing field by allowing web apps to store and retrieve data locally. This is not only faster than typical RPCs, but more functional too, as it allows the app to access data even when there is no Internet connection.

When selecting 'Add Google API' and then 'GAL GWT Maps', will it use V2 or V3 of the Maps API. Google Maps Javascript API Version 2 was officially deprecated as of May 19, 2010, but the libary described at http://code.google.com/p/gwt-google-apis/wiki/MapsGettingStarted only supports V2.

Problems downloading artifact: osgi.bundle,com.google.gdt.eclipse.designer.hosted.2_0.webkit_win32,2.3.0.r36x201104251559.MD5 hash is not as expected. Expected: a9ee1d82e16e8389fe723cada49feb4c and found 57ca1e92aa8fbad43412ee918aada61f.Problems downloading artifact: osgi.bundle,com.google.gwt.eclipse.core,2.3.0.r36v201104261928.MD5 hash is not as expected. Expected: 9798a0241cdfa5c209681334ab4287fe and found 320974b5314677791342359702fca297.Problems downloading artifact: osgi.bundle,org.eclipse.wb.core.lib,0.9.0.r36x201104251542.MD5 hash is not as expected. Expected: ebd731e1d6a17886bd40a38486a8f007 and found 6e82ab363b5e42be59e8446cca907cf6.

Given the purges inside Google in the last few months of various API's, I doubt we'll see official Maps V3 GWT support anytime soon. You best write your own or sick with the V2 GWT API that was depreciated 18 months ago.